finds

We took Eamonn to his first library sale this morning.
He seemed to enjoy it, riding front pack with mama in his Winnie the Pooh hoodie, complete with ears.

We picked up four boxes of stock and a couple of grocery bags of pocket books for the store for 80 bucks.
One book of historic photos from the Imperial Valley priced out at 90, so that took care of that.

The most interesting part was taking a spin through the hardcover fiction.
I don't usually have time, since most sales start at 9am on work days. But today I gave it a once over, and found some really interesting books paddling furiously in the scrum, trying not to drown in the the Dan Browns, Nora Roberts and Danielle Steels.

A pretty nice 1st edition of The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin, a book I've never seen in hardcover. Should move briskly at 100. An amazingly fucking clean 1st edition of Black Robe by Brian Moore (a book I believe Bobo teaches). Not super valuable, but it's rare to see a book you can honestly describe as Fine/Fine in the wild, unless it came out last week.

And one for the personal library, an abnormally nice copy of The Ice Schooner by Michael Moorcock.
Old-ish SF and Fantasy is scarce in hardcover period, clean copies are a rare treat.

These are the little sparks that keep dealers pawing through mountains of dreck for years on end.


/edit
Curiosity inspires me to look up Black Robe.
There are 78 1st edition hardcovers in dust jackets, let's see how far up the price ladder I have to climb to find one that's Fine/Fine....

Winner:
#33, at an eminently reasonable $15.00.
I wouldn't personally buy this copy because of a line in the description:
We offer a LIFETIME GUARANTEE.
Never trust book dealers who traffic in the language of the department store.